to play
before the crowd."[2045]

+636. "The Suffering Christ." "Pseudo-Querolus."+ In the fourth century
the Christians tried to use the theater for their purposes. The drama
_The Suffering Christ_ is attributed to Gregory of Nazianz. It
represents the passion of Jesus as understood by the Nicene theologians.
It consists of twelve hundred and seventy-three verses taken more or
less exactly from the tragedies of Euripides and patched together.
Lintilhac[2046] says it is now the accepted opinion that it cannot be of
remoter origin than the eleventh century, so that the most noteworthy
fact about it would be that it is a Greek liturgical play of even date
with the earliest western plays of that class. In it the Virgin Mary is
a pagan woman, who uses verses of Hecuba and Medea, and thinks of
suicide.[2047] Another play of the fourth century, which is mentioned as
important in the history of the drama, is the _Pseudo-Querolus_. It is
an imitation of Plautus. Querolus is the forerunner of Moliere's
Misanthrope and so a biolog,--a permanent type of person.[2048] Dramas
representing martyrdom and other Christian incidents were presented with
very great realism.[2049]

+637. The _mimus_ and Christianity.+ The _mimus_ opened war on
Christianity. The religion was unpopular and hated. It set itself
against the mores of the society at the time. It was scoffed at just as
Puritans, Quakers, Mormons, and Christian Scientists have been scoffed
at since and for the same reasons. It shared the unpopularity of the
Jews, who came before the heathen world claiming the isolation of
superiority, exclusive favor of God, ascendancy by rights over all the
world. To the pagans the Christians seemed to make a great fuss about
nothing. The _mimus_ seized the popular sentiment and gave it
expression. The Christian became the clown and simpleton. Christian
rites were parodied and ridiculed. Martyrdoms were represented on the
stage, the martyr being the buffoon. The heathen gods were taken under
the protection of the _mimus_, instead of being burlesqued as they had
been for several centuries. This mockery ran through the Roman empire
until the end of the fourth century, when the church got the protection
of the state against public insult, but Christianity fell under the
dominion of heathen mores. The great ecclesiastics of the fifth century
preached fiercely against the theater, not because of the insults of the
theater against the church, for the